Gorilla Go Wilder Free Play in Demo Mode by Nextgen Gaming

Gorilla Go Wilder review

Theme and Storyline

Gary the gorilla has appeared before in NextGen Gaming’s products. In Gorilla Go Wilder he’s off on a more impressively three dimensional and varied holiday. On booting the game up, the player is greeted with a sandy cove, palm trees, and Gary, the king of the swingers.

Beyond its island setting and main character, Gorilla Go Wilder doesn’t provide a lot of context for what’s going on. Even the places you get to visit in the numerous bonus games add very little to the world in which Gary lives.

The odd lack of engaging theme might explain why this graphically impressive and feature heavy slot is as unpopular as it is.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The graphics are what Gorilla Go Wilder lives and breathes. They are detailed enough that the slot offers lower resolution options in case the slot slows your browser down.

Unfortunately, the graphics team seems to have spent far longer on the animations for the background where waves crash and Gary emotes theatrically. The reels seem to have been neglected. They are inhabited by stock symbols and a few drab, cartoony tropical creatures.

The music is one of the few parts of the game with some character, sounding very similar to various excellent Crash Bandicoot soundtracks.

Gameplay

At first glance, Gorilla Go Wilder has a very simple set of gameplay mechanics. Not that NextGen’s instruction manual is much use in untangling them.

The base game is a simple three by five slot with twenty-five win lines.

There are two randomised features in the base game. The first is Gary’s gift which simply triggers a bonus round (see below for details), and the second is the Shell Re-Spin game.

In the Shell Re-Spin the player gets a free respin. Additional spins can be won by hitting the Shell symbol in a respin. The more times you trigger the Shell Re-Spin feature the better the rewards are.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the Shell and Scatter symbols.

Three or more Scatter symbols will trigger the Bonus Islands feature. This is the big unique selling point of Gorilla Go Wilder. There are eight bonus islands which the player can unlock in whatever order they see fit.

Each island offers a different combination of free spins, multipliers and other features like sticky wilds, expanding wilds and additional win lines.

The first time they trigger the Bonus Islands, they can choose one island. A further three triggers will give the player the option to unlock another Island and so on until they are all unlocked.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 97.04% maximum. However, it can be as low as 93.05% depending on which bonuses you pick and how long you play (there are greater rewards for loyalty to the game).

Unfortunately, Nextgen are not telling anyone which game to pick to maximise the return to player and so we have to assume the lowest value which is so low as to disqualify this game from any recommendation on any ground.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.30 up to a maximum of $/£/€150.00 per spin.

The volatility of this game is listed as medium/high on NextGen’s website. This is great as we like higher volatility games because they go well with our preferred strategies.

Conclusion

Gorilla Go Wilder is an impressive slot. The wide variety of features, the built in loyalty rewards, and the shiny 3D animations are technical achievements.

However, the player experience is dire. The game is bland on the surface and miserly beneath it. Next time Gary the Gorilla should go on holiday to a farm upstate.